An Angel Passed Above Us

I’m open to anything, he said, pushing the AK-74 a bit farther away and reaching under his bulletproof vest to scratch his armpit, then continued, I’m glad I can at last say it all, since until now he’d had no opportunity, he’d only been able to mention one or two minor details whenever they’d had a breather, even though they hadn’t been sleeping because of the bombardment, but now at last he could tell the whole story, and all in one piece, but first he had to begin by saying he was not a future analyst or futurologist, in civilian life he’d been a trend analyst, though rather than a trend analyst, he preferred to describe himself as a kind of observer, and whereas future analysts or futurologists sat around in a room, watching monitors, yes, they had their own methods, models, futures wheels, and so on, but for them it was inconceivable to think in larger terms, the way he did, about society, humankind, robots—these things upset them—so he was not an analyst of the future but rather of trends, data, facts, he explained, placing separate emphasis on each of the three words, but then—since only one eye was more or less intact, although with rather hazy vision—to be on the safe side he groped with his hand along the edge of the pallets he was lying on, because, since his left leg had been amputated at Bucha during the first month of fighting, and since the walking sticks he leaned against the inner wall of the trench were always sliding down, and now, once again, he was unable to grab one, all he could do was crawl over to his neighbor, and grope to find the other man’s chest, shoulder, neck, and carefully pull his companion’s head back onto the bolster of his rolled-up fatigue jacket, because he’d noticed that that head was starting to slide down into the mud, and then he brought his hazy right eye closer to the other man’s bandaged abdominal wound, stared at it for a while, meanwhile explaining, look here, my friend, it’s a very simple formula, there is a closed system, the earth, the population expands, now it is seven and a half, soon it will be eight billion, and we pretend that this is some huge surprise, but no, we’ve known for half a century that this multitude of humans would ultimately need some form of automated cooperation, of course we’ve known this, and felt it, and that was why—and here he signaled with a gesture that a parenthetic remark was about to follow—he’d so much liked it when, over fifty years ago, in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of the characters, holding some flat thingamajig in his hands, pressed something on it to reach, move, start up, or stop anything at will, and nowadays this seems so natural to us, no? but back then it was not at all natural, it was nonsense, sheer fantasy, childish make-believe, we snickered at the notion, yet today you have your smartphone in your hand and you can reach anyone, it used to be that people did not chat with someone far away, how could they have? there was no telephone, etcetera, and here he made a face, as if he didn’t like the way the bloodied bandage on that abdomen looked, and he crawled back to his own pallets, he had pushed two together side by side for his companion, and two for himself, somehow, while tottering in the mud on one leg, with one arm, and all this in a scooped-out, well-concealed cave, where they hadn’t been discovered after their whole platoon was forced to flee from an assault so fierce that it had suddenly been each man for himself, pell-mell—nothing could be done about the two of them, and they’d been left behind as the orcs raced past above them, the scumbags only quickly noting the empty trench, not seeing them in their cave where they now lay on pallets, waiting for someone to come back for them, whenever that would be possible, though it hadn’t been possible, the shelling hadn’t let up, and they’d been lying here in this cave for several hours on two-times-two pallets, he had not consulted his watch, his blurry eye would not have been able to make out the hands on the dial, and anyway he did not want to know the time, it didn’t matter that the sergeant had yelled back to them that he’d send the medics, the offensive had not relented for one second since then, the bombardment just kept up nonstop, and here they were in this cave, on two-times-two pallets, and what, he went on, was he supposed to do? he simply loved such advances, such mental leaps, how they enable us to talk to people on the far side of the earth, I mean, isn’t that crazy? how that transformed all business transactions and transformed, radically transformed, communications, all the information that reaches you in a single day, you check out Instagram, just scroll down, and as you’re walking down the street, there are those giant ads, the huge billboards, and the electric sign at the bus stop telling you when’s the next bus, your single day’s information equals a lifetime’s worth for a medieval serf, and remember how in twenty-year-old communications textbooks it said that eight distractions a day will prevent you from focusing, and nowadays? eight distractions will get you just about as far as the toilet in the morning, because on the way you check your phone to see if you have any new emails, any text messages, and what’s up on Instagram and Twitter, then you scan the headlines, we operate in an utterly new way, living far richer and more interesting lives, for instance, any teenager these days is far, far better at multitasking than, say, Leonardo da Vinci, yes, he was a genius, never been another like him, but unable to multitask, he did one thing only at any one time, did one thing for two or three days, whereas now? how exciting is that?

Yeah, exciting

Well, he was a simple foot soldier now, because it had been no use telling them what he did, they didn’t find him suitable for higher tasks, because what did it mean, viewing things on a societal scale? when we’re defending the homeland, practical men are needed, and he—and he hadn’t denied it in front of the enlistment committee—was an expressly theoretical man, but still, he would reenlist with the infantry on his one leg, and they’d reply that all you need is one finger on a trigger, and he wouldn’t say he wasn’t disappointed, because he was a bit disappointed, he was very adept with computers in an everyday way, and yet he, with his theoretical bent, preferred an approach by way of culture, that’s what really interested him; in other words, the very large cosmic scale, the stars and such, was not for him, and the psychological level, the individual, that likewise was not for him, but culture, yes, and subcultures, in other words, the ways humans change, that’s what he’s always studied, the way throughout history we have been reprogramming ourselves along technological lines, and now we are in the midst of such a reprogramming, we are registering the world in new ways, communicating in new ways, living in new ways, and all this for a reason, and you begin to realize what this reason is, why people do things, for we must understand that culture is a human survival strategy, there are tons of species on Earth, and ours has chosen culture to survive; some species chose a huge amount of teeth, another grew gigantic tails to smite their prey, yet another a monstrous jaw, or a toxin, or an electric current, but as for us, he said—while, in the ongoing bombardment, he eyed the roots protruding from the two walls of the trench—we chose culture, and an analyst of trends, such as myself, analyzes—with data, facts, information!—the problems this culture can solve and the ones it cannot, the things that can be solved by technology and the things that cannot, but it’s always the humans, focusing on them is interesting, the progress we’re making, why we do this or why we do that, because it’s vital that you comprehend the real changes, for me it doesn’t matter which cell phone came out with what new features in which model, that’s not at all interesting, but what does it really mean that we have interlinked ourselves, that suddenly we are all simultaneously afraid, or all simultaneously trust each other, we have never before lived at such a velocity, never has there been this many of us, life has never before been so bustling, I find all of this most interesting, for starters I—and he pointed at himself—I always begin with the premise that everyone wants to be happy, wealthy, and healthy, and in various eras we’ve always employed various strategies to attain this, and it is obvious we’re heading that way, that everybody wants to live as long as possible, be as rich as possible, as happy as possible, what’s more, we have already attained it, and I have the numbers to prove it, during ninety-nine percent of humankind’s history, ninety-nine percent of humans were starving, eighty-eight percent of humans still lived in deep poverty in 1880, forty percent in 1980, ten percent in 2018, and we have doubled and tripled our lifespan, and, of course, by now there are too fucking many of us and we’ve burned up the natural resources, but still—and here he raised an index finger—humankind has never been this wealthy, for centuries economic capacities never changed, in 1800 a man in Italy earned about the same as a man in the Italy of 1300, that is, about one thousand six hundred dollars, but a hundred or a hundred and fifty years after the arrival of innovations that kick-started the consumer economy—the steam engine, the railroad, light bulbs, cars, dishwashers, dishwashers!!!—suddenly, after World War II, prosperity burst upon us, the forty-year human lifespan shot up to eighty years, the world economy grew two-hundred-and-fifty-fold, yes, we became very rich, if you juxtapose the two pictures, you’ll see that in the 1800s the richest people in the wealthiest nation did not live as well as the poorest person in the poorest country today, from an economic, I repeat, economic point of view, and if you think about it, one may envy kings, but sitting around in those unheated castles, using chamber pots, shut off from the news, well, no, no way, of course trend analysts are not fools, we know there is misery and misfortune and poverty, but if we consider the species, humankind has never lived at so high a standard, oh, hold on, shit, you’re slipping again, my friend, he interrupted himself, and since he didn’t have enough strength to crawl over, he screamed, Hey, wake up, as the other man slowly lifted his head without opening his eyes even though he still had both, and all he could reply was

Go on

BM-21s, he now announced, as if saying something new, but, ever since the direct confrontation, these had been fired at them without respite, and he held his breath, counted all forty of them, then waited a bit, took a deep breath, and went on, yes, a great deal that we take for granted today has not always been so, equality before the law, women’s rights, human rights, and so on, and since the turn of the millennium, but especially since 2019, we’ve had freedom of choice, many people now have many more options, you can travel abroad, you can study one field or another, you can devote yourself to a hobby, there are many new jobs that are very interesting, very creative, although a person from medieval times would not understand a thing, what, seeing a broker sitting in a Kyiv office pressing buttons all day, how can you call that work? you would not be able to persuade that person that this broker is creating value, that this is indeed work, adding to the universal sum total, where it is no longer mere production that matters but creativity, because creativity has become the greatest asset, what matters is no longer just delivering the content to the destination but delivering it when it is needed, and by now what matters most is connecting, linking together the information with a given situation, at the correct time, rather than con—, but before he could finish, the other man by his side spoke, saying

Go on

Whereupon he merely remarked, oh good, very well, my friend, I’m glad you are alive, keep it up, my friend, because life is an amazing thing, for instance what tickled him the most was how we had realized our ancestral dreams—just think, when five thousand years ago the Polynesians in their little boats roamed about all over the place, they sailed hundreds of miles in order to speak with those who were far away, and look, now we have solved that problem, we have the telephone; there was a time when that used to be called telepathy, but no, it’s not telepathic, it’s telephonic, too bad that by now neither of ours works, but still the telephone on the level of the human species exists, and the two of us will soon have one in hand, because I am certain that the medics will soon be arriving, but in the meantime he’d like to say that we have always wanted to know everything, summoning spirits, climbing up the shaman’s tree, and, well, now we have the internet, or, to mention something else, we have always wanted someone else to work in our place, and, well, now we have robots, we have always wanted to know every language, and now we have Google Translate, yes, so many things that we used to associate with the highest, the most exceptional intellectual attainment already exist today, for instance formerly it was a tremendous boon not to get lost, people with tracking abilities commanded high social value, and now GPS makes all that available to anyone, that’s why I don’t like hearing people complain about what kind of world this is, everyone’s glued to their smartphone, because what matters is what one does on one’s phone, one reads or chats on it, or checks the lab results of the latest blood test, because it’s already up in the cloud, or scans the market to see how bitcoin’s doing at this very minute, so we must admit, all in all, that with the smartphone we have resolved a great many things, not all things, but a great many, which brings us to the question of just what digital culture is good for, well, I’ll tell you, only stay awake please!

I’m awake, keep going

Very well, so you’re alive, keep it up, because this world’s amazing, and in this world, and by now this is a cliché, but I keep repeating it, there are now so very many of us, please imagine that in a tight little room at a quarter to midnight there are ten of us, then at five minutes to midnight thirty more arrive, and now we are packed in like sardines, see, we’ve moved into cities, cities are a good thing, they have everything, and though Earth has always been a rural planet, by 1980, or 2000, urbanization really kicked in, and by now half of the population lives in cities, soon it will be two-thirds, a great many strangers now live side by side, and while yes, cities are indeed a good thing, with jobs, entertainment, culture, art, education, health care, yet we are strangers to each other, and we are afraid of strangers, though if you really think about it, we’ve only been using digital culture for five or ten years, cell phones, tablets, and so on, we like it so much, it’s grown on us, it’s become so important, and I, for one—and here he thumbed his bulletproof vest—am afraid on the street, everyone’s a stranger, but still when at 2:00 a.m. you’re walking home drunk, you press a button, a stranger arrives with a car, say an Uber, and you get in, they take you home, or else you take your family and drive to a stranger’s house in Odesa, for a vacation, and that’s fine, but it’s never been like this before, it used to be your buddy would give you a ride, or your neighbor would help, but that strangers should interlink, no, never before, that’s happening only now, because we’ve had to make it possible for so many strangers to live together in cities, and from now on it’s wasted breath to kvetch about people spending too much time with their phones, that’s how it is, and how it will be, everyone will have their own personal devices, implanted into their scalps or sewn into their wrists, what’s the difference, we’ll be creating more and more connections to machines, until we won’t even know if something’s coming from a human or from a machine, the point is that—and he again raised his forefinger—it won’t even matter, that we couldn’t do this before and now we can, and that’s all to the good, by now we’re living in a networked society, we’re able to connect money, knowledge, artists, and collectors, for instance from now on the digital artist can sell an NFT artwork with one hundred percent authenticity as a unique art object, formerly we built roads, now we build networks, an invisible web surrounds us, and we will be forced to find uses for it, and its usefulness will simply be itself, and I, for one, am certain that the devastation of the earth will be remedied with the help of digital culture, we shall accomplish it, because we must, we already have the technologies, or if not yet, we’ll very soon have them, and here he lowered his voice, because his mouth was dry, and he groped for a bottle by his side and took a swig, cleared his throat . . .

Go on

Yes, yes, he said, that’s indeed how it will be—everything would be just like he said, and you could make jokes and say he was speaking only to keep up his comrade’s spirit, which was partly true, but there was also another reason—because the future, and we’re already dangling in it, will actually be so radically new (it was so obvious that this was no pipe dream, and certainly not meant as any consolation), I can’t help but repeat the obvious, that we are only at the very outset of the future, yes, and now get this, we’ve become very rich indeed, but the room’s gotten too crowded, meaning that from now on we’re no longer striving for a better life, but just to keep our current standard of living, to keep what we have, by now it’s all interactions, and the initiatives emerge from the bottom, so that now you and I and anyone can voice our needs and wants, which is huge—in other words, we may all together collectively or what have you, join up, and shape what is to come—this will be vitally necessary, because the noise has become incredible, and I’m not referring to this, and here he bobbed his head upward, as another batch of Grad missiles zoomed overhead, making him pause for a moment, to see what would happen, but nothing did, and after all forty of them had whizzed overhead, and slammed down somewhere else, he resumed the thread, saying that the interaction—

Think they’ll come back for us?

You mean back from the future, my friend? No, they won’t from there, but of course they’ll be back for us, that’s a given, he said, because we will counterattack, so don’t shit your pants just because of a little abdominal bleeding, they’ll be back soon, and until then please concentrate on what I’m saying, where was I, yes, every action has become part of the process of interaction, and in time will become even more so, take for instance the fact, and I repeat, the fact! that we like to personally bond with things, so if I get a digital bracelet, in fact a pair of those Bond Touch bracelets with blue display, I feel it becoming part of me, because it links me to my love, and here he turned toward his companion, what is yours called, because mine’s Zorya, nice name, isn’t it? she too will have one of these bracelets, so this way it will of course become deeply personal, carrying your own experience, your own thoughts, so that we respond to it emotionally, for instance this is what will tie him to Zorya when they’re apart, such as right now, when she’s somewhere in Hamburg, at 15 Lauensteinstrasse, while he’s here in this filthy hole, so then the relationship with this bracelet on his arm will be quite different, totally different from going to a florist’s and sending a bouquet of fresh roses to Hamburg, to Zorya at 15 Lauensteinstrasse, totally different, soon he’ll be wearing one of these little devices, and so will Zorya, it will be his Christmas present to her, this precious little bracelet, so this dear little Bond Touch will become Zorya, your head’s dangling in the mud again, he scolded his companion, and he made as if to once more clamber down from his spot and crawl over to him, but he only pretended to, blood kept running down his face from his bandaged left eye, although it wasn’t quite gushing, it was still flowing nonetheless, it had been like that for hours now, he tried shifting the bandage a little, but that only seemed to make it worse, so he stopped quickly and turned to speak to his companion again—

I can’t feel a thing

Of course you can’t, he allowed, and—as he was unable to tie new bandages—we’ll just have to gut this out together, or else we’ll croak here, but, just to spite them, we’ll refuse to croak here, so listen to me some more, he crawled over to reposition the other man’s dangling head, and after he lifted it back up onto the folded jacket, he felt for the bandage on the man’s belly to check that the knot was still tight enough around the midriff, then crawled back through the mud to his own pallets, groped for the edge, wriggled back on, groaned, wiped his bloody hand on his pants, resisted the urge to touch his eye bandage again, even as words kept pouring out of him, here’s where we skip to the next level, because in the digital world, when you upload something on the internet, it stays there forever, we don’t quite realize this, thinking that the stuff we upload doesn’t really exist, yet it does, and it stays there for all eternity, so that it is our responsibility to upload only data that we really and truly want to make known—this is important, once you upload it, even if you delete, it will not disappear, ever—so we must change, and we will indeed change, our attitude, our attitude globally, because digital systems compel us to be more disciplined, more aware and more intelligent, just as we mean to be in other spheres of life, and now he’ll say something you might find most surprising, namely, that nothing is for free, if you think you’re getting something for free, then it means you yourself are the product, like they say, and this is indeed how matters stand, what, something for free!?! how could it ever be free?! an app must be created and designed for whatever purpose, the appropriate technology has to be found, it must be developed, tweaked, and updated, and a thousand other things, how could all this be free, and so those who offer it for free are actually buying, in exchange, your attention and behavior, so you will view certain ads, and shape your response to the items featured in those ads, and this, in my opinion, is quite all right, yes, it’s manipulation, but essentially no different from what peddlers did in the old days, working their beat, offering merchandise and singing its praises to make you feel like buying, except that nowadays in digital space, via seemingly free apps, it’s no longer like that old peddler, today the scale’s vastly greater and the profits are enormous, enough said about the accursed players of the world’s largest digital corporations, because it is true, of course it’s true, that Facebook earns twelve dollars annually per each consumer, yes, that’s true, but they give you something in return, yes, you may use their platform for free, and in exchange they will sell data about you, data upon which the ads are based, this is business, which sounds bad but actually leads to good things, so that’s not the problem, the problem is that if you’re not aware of this, because it simply doesn’t interest you, then you’ll think that Facebook, Twitter, and Insta are for free, but the hell they are, you’re selling yourself to them for ads, that’s how it is, you must be aware of this, you have to be aware of what you get and for how much, and seeing as this is the case, you should demand to be paid, we must shed our carelessness and love of comfort, in other words stupidity is a handicap, technology’s just technology, it merely makes certain things possible—use it or not, it’s your choice—you mustn’t be afraid of technology and if you have a smartphone, you’ll never be lost again, you can work from home, listen to music, order a pizza, and, just to emphasize it once more, because this is important, all this is transforming us, yes, we must change, and we are capable of changing, take for instance smoking, when we prohibited it in closed spaces, for a while no one thought this could happen, that all hell would break loose, yet there was no insurrection, and today it’s difficult to conceive of a person smoking indoors in public, when others are present, and this did not take very long, the process is amazingly rapid, we can learn very easily, we can change very easily, why, we could eradicate poverty in two days, my friend, we have the business models—

I don’t think they’ll be coming back

Of course they will, the fuck they won’t, stop whining, just listen to what I’m saying, we are far too wasteful, and now, now at a breakneck pace, we must stop being wasteful, because our standard of living will drop, individually as well as, what matters, globally, but here is something else, something we could call the ability to build cathedrals, an ability we have totally lost, take medieval times, I love medieval examples, when town dwellers decided, all right, until now we have been building little hovels for ourselves, but let us now build a splendid edifice worthy of our God, and they began building, but did so knowing that in their lifetimes they would never get to see what three hundred years later the great-grandchildren of their great-grandchildren would actually see, and still they began building, whereas today our thinking is very short-term, why did we shrink, we shouldn’t have—we have to regain our cathedral-building ability, and do you know why? because we need dreams, we need large-scale, bold visions—

Fuck visions, I need water

There’s no water, here, have some vodka, it works if you’re thirsty, okay, you don’t want any, fine, I understand, but please, you shouldn’t moan and groan, I can see you’re in pain, so am I, ignore it—listen to me, culture is a code, this is worth thinking about, a code you can read to see what people are like, what they want, and what they love, and fear, and believe is good or bad, what their goals are, and so on; in the old days, if you felt a pressure in your chest you knew perfectly well that an incubus had sat on you while you slept, then flew circles around you before flying away, and you were happy that you got off so lightly, whereas nowadays we know it’s acid reflux, we know so many things, we’ve become very rational, and we can register reality much faster, but our attention span’s so much shorter, and while on the other hand we’re able to transform ourselves very rapidly, a person in medieval times walked the street very differently from us, their footwear was much cruder and their soles thinner, plus there was no sidewalk, at most some rough cobblestone, all sorts of things pricked and poked your feet, so what you did was first lower a toe, then a heel, now our walk is totally different, and here once again we skip to the next level—what’s going on here? biological changes caused by a technological revolution?—yes, it’s exactly that, we can’t take our eyes off the phone, even while walking, and as a result our peripheral vision has significantly improved, whereas our sense of danger has diminished, you want me to provide the data? no? okay, then I won’t, take time for instance, we all believe in time, we go about, check the clock, schedule our day, we plan now what we’ll be doing in ten minutes, or in ten, twenty years, or take robots, here they are, why the hell should we be afraid of them, we can delegate to robots all the stuff that’s always bored us but had to be done, and what happens when a robot does it, we get free time, for sports, entertainment, study, learning new and ever newer things, and at this point, although I usually won’t do this, I’ll admit something, because for the time being it’s still a problem, namely, if today, emphasis on today, I get some free time, then immediately I want to fill it up with something, whereas I should be glad to exist, just to be alive and healthy, to see the light shimmering on tree leaves, hear the water murmuring over the brook’s singing stones, the tall grass rustling around my feet, isn’t this the idea? to be here, isn’t that so? well, of course it is, and this is an astounding achievement, and we shouldn’t push it off, hiding it behind the future, I know that sounds funny coming from a so-called futurologist, but that’s how it is, we really shouldn’t, and then consider this, we are a tool-utilizing species, and this is the first time in the history of the world of living creatures that a tool-using species hands over the task to the tool, you see robots are interesting because they bring digital culture into the physical sphere, evolving with uncanny rapidity, and what robots are able to do today will never be lost, they will only get smarter, robots are destined to evolve, just like us, and I, for one, he said, am not afraid of robots, I like them, of course a robot may seem scary, but so did the wheel, and so did the telescope, the steam engine, and speeding cars, and airplanes, no need to go on with the list; some things may seem scary at first glance, but then we get used to them, and use them, and using them we get to love them, and we should accept that this is how they are, that they are here for us, so we shouldn’t be afraid, a robot has no desires, no emotions, will it seduce you? and then shoot you? why would it ever do such a thing?! don’t be afraid, things will be fine, in fact they’ll be super—

I’m thirsty

I’ve already told you, he shot back, we only have vodka, if you don’t want it, fine, what, use it to rinse those wounds? hell no, this is precious vodka, there’ll be water later, stay calm, these goddamn Grads are just about over, and the hell with ’em, just pay no attention, if it hurts, let it hurt, pain is good, it shows the body’s fighting, may it fight on, but listen to me in the meantime, you’re doing fine, now at last we get around to money, and how we use it, yes, let’s admit we use it, but in reality we don’t understand what money actually is, we think it is some physical thing because we handle it, and you think you hold a thousand hryvnia banknote in your hand, whereas it is, and has been for a very long time now, only a piece of paper, its value is not based on gold, but then what is it based on? and here’s where we get to the nitty-gritty, so you must pay attention a while longer, money for a long time now has been virtual, these days the best proof of this is cryptocurrency, it’s not hard to predict that cryptocurrencies will prove momentous for our societies, today we already know this, so it’s no outlandish claim, the real question is how to do it well, there are methods for going about it, and these must be observed, many people think enthusiasm is enough, but no, lots of know-how is needed, and this know-how requires a broader view, because one must know what crypto is, and what it isn’t, the things it can or cannot be used for; there are some, like Musk, and we in Ukraine can thank him for many things, some of the things he supports are dreams, visions, we mustn’t forget this, this higher point of view, because to understand the crypto world, you need a discerning overview, all right, but you also need a vision, you’ll do well if you begin with this vision, then you’ll be able to use crypto for what it’s intended for; now you may object, what is this cryptocurrency? the whole thing is a scam, you can’t grab hold of it, it’s nonexistent, so how can you say it exists? to this I’d reply that there is a technology for the world of crypto, there is blockchain, one of the greatest inventions in recent history, okay, we don’t understand it, but we don’t need to understand it, because understanding it isn’t required for using it, just like when you’re watching TV, you don’t need to know that a pinpoint of light races across the screen in a fraction of a second, so in the realm of cryptocurrency you don’t absolutely need to understand the underlying technology or set of technologies, you just need to use it, crypto, in my view—and here he pointed at himself—is about innovation, crypto together with blockchain is an operational model that makes possible certain qualities, such as authenticity, uniformity, identifiability, and a tremendous flexibility or, if you will, extraterritoriality, our current money has physical limitations, and as additional and different kinds of cryptocurrencies come into being, and become more widespread, they will be bolstered by a usefulness that permeates society, making crypto even more reliable, increasingly embedded in global society, and then it will become crystal clear that the creator and launcher of this entity that enmeshes all has converted cryptocurrency into a social value—here he needed to pause again, because of new sounds, louder explosions beyond the trench where they lay, they were now firing from three Grads, that amounted to 120 missiles, followed by a sudden silence, a lull in which you could hear the screech of birds somewhere out there in the fields, and he waited a bit to see what would happen, nothing happened, only the birds, so he resumed again—like it or not, we’re going to Mars, like it or not, we’ll colonize Mars, because we’ll have to, not in order to save the earth, the earth will be quite all right, humans must save themselves, because here we’re stuck in a trap, and we must free ourselves, so we’re heading for Mars, yes, my friend, and here two things must be clearly understood, the first is that business and trust, these go hand in hand, you can see that’s the trend, so be the first, be the winner when the physical and virtual worlds interconnect, because I’ve invested my cryptocurrencies in a vision, you need money for such an investment, so let it be crypto money, it makes no difference what you call it, money’s a matter of faith, a decision, do I believe in it, do I trust it, this may be seen plain and clear as we witness the birth and infancy of the crypto world in our day and age, there will exist several means of payment, one of them being today’s money, the other, crypto money, the third will be actions, and these three will continue to meld into each other, it’s already like that today, as shown precisely by the example of cryptocurrency, especially here in our country, in Ukraine the popularity of crypto is the fifth highest in the world, the reason being that we Ukrainians clearly see that in the future, capital and value will be action-based, the model for this already exists in the world of crypto, if you construct a means of payment that overarches borders, then upon the interlinking of the physical and virtual worlds you will be the primary bank, don’t you want to be partner in a primary bank? of course you do, because you, too, want to be in a position where you are the platform, if you create a means of payment that people believe is valid, then they will use this new means of payment, money’s a matter of faith, but the real question is how many believe in it or, rather, in the vision the money is needed for, because if enough people believe in it, the project will be realized, because there is no dream, given technological creativity, that cannot be realized, you see, the dream becomes reality, this is no longer an empty phrase, it’s never been like this before, but from now on it is, and will continue to be so—

We’re gonna croak

Glad to hear signs of life from the other pallets, he remarked wryly, and continued, let’s go back to the beginning, and once again pose the question, just what is money, and reply that money is a means of exchange, humankind has lived mostly in small communities, and once upon a time, somewhere, people decided to call a certain large round stone slab money, which, by the way, we might as well admit, just between the two of us in this dirty, rotten, stinking cave, was in fact a lot like cryptocurrency, because that slab was never actually moved, what matters is that we agree on a means of exchange that is accepted by every member of the community, it’s not difficult to introduce a new monetary instrument if the community accepts it and believes in it, in the course of history, a great many local currencies have come into being, the question’s always what a unit of money would be worth, one sheep? or a bushel of wheat? and here we can skip to crypto, and state that the validity of this currency, whatever form it takes, is mostly bestowed by itself, it offers a possibility, you can use me for money, okay, but at which point does one start using it? and the answer is, when the currency existing in a virtual sphere starts to seep into the physical world, when the first bitcoin automats appear, when a certain store starts accepting payment in cryptocurrency, then the virtual becomes “real” and there begins an irreversible process, which brings us to this second level, where in many instances we are using bitcoin, ether, or an even more secure variety, such as stablecoin, when we aren’t even aware we are using it, for instance, I go to a travel agency, and thanks to blockchain technology I purchase a vacation, and then I have a cup of coffee somewhere before going home, in other words, many ledger transactions already occur via crypto instead of real money, virtual currency is already far more prevalent than people realize, but eventually they’ll become aware of it, they’ll take notice, and hey, I’ve just received something in exchange for this ether, this bitcoin, or stablecoin, I have done something, in other words, I’ve accepted it as a means of exchange, and others, too, accept it, and then everyone accepts it, and from then on the world of crypto will calm down and stabilize, these days the exchange rate is often still a roller-coaster ride, on account of speculators and swindlers, and prices fluctuate, so you may have to sit around waiting quite a while for a crashed rate of exchange to return to the purchase price, but we must recognize that this is already happening, we have this money, virtual money, all those free apps on our smartphones are money working virtually, since we use them for free, but we pay by doing things in the expected manner, I sell my attention, and in exchange I can use the service for free, back in Soviet times the Communists had intended something similar when they said that money would disappear, that everyone would act, work, and partake of goods according to their needs, but they failed because there was no universal currency for establishing equivalences between one kind of behavior and another, today we have that equivalence, however, and will continue to have it, you can bet on that, and now it’s time to summarize—here he raised himself from his pallets, hoping that his companion was still awake, because for some time now, he had not heard any breathing by his side—you can’t go to sleep now, he said, no, not yet, because here comes the best part, pay attention now—but there was no response, it was quiet in the cave, and outside, too, it seemed to have grown quieter overhead, apparently the GRADs were giving it a rest, and a fresh platoon was arriving from Popasna, only scattered mortar fire could be heard now, which was like silence, so he had to remind his companion, no sleeping, no sleeping now, any minute they’ll be here for us, perhaps I can finish up before that, he said skittishly, and kept his one good eye on his comrade, may I continue? is that a yes? at least nod, or blink, okay, whatever, I’ll continue anyway, even half blind I cannot help but repeat, and repetition equals knowledge itself, in my opinion, well, anyway, here comes the recap, this is a closed system, there are too many of us, and a large number of ongoing processes are amplifying each other, and they all point in the same direction, we must act faster and faster, and when we act, we must keep in mind several people simultaneously, that’s why we’re perfecting AI, to establish lightning-fast contact with several people at the same time, our lives have fundamentally changed, we stand at the gateway of a bewildering, unknown yet calculable world, you no longer go to work for eight hours, it’s more like you work for a couple of minutes on the subway, as you reply to a work email, then you come home, play a game, earn some money, and here’s a question: were you playing or making money? the two have a way of converging, hundreds of transitions are in motion simultaneously, amplifying each other, and now we have these smart contracts that provide one with work, yes, it could be for three minutes, yet setting up a contract today may still take four days, but blockchain is already available, eventually everything will be totally automated, so it looks like we won’t be needing lawyers, both parties will know everything in advance, in a fraction of a second I’ll be able to hire you for a job, everything will be taken care of by blockchain and AI, currently we still have validators, say you want to sell your apartment and I want to buy it, then a middleman, a lawyer, must enter the process, slowing the whole thing down, and money must be spent on this validator’s work, and now this will no longer be so, the validator will be built into the cryptocurrency, authenticating by means of blockchain that you are indeed who you claim to be, both parties will be one hundred percent confident that they know all they need to know about each other to make a decision, and the smart contract is done, period, no need to feel sorry for lawyers, because they will still ride blockchain and get their money, no need to feel sorry for banks, because they will introduce their own cryptocurrencies, and you might say, gee, this bank advanced me one hundred thousand hryvnia, but is this actually worth one hundred thousand hryvnia?! on my monitor it says that I have one hundred thousand hryvnia in my account, so I will never, EVER leave this bank, because its money is my money, and the same holds true society-wide, thereby pointing way beyond currency, it will become systemic, except for all this to happen our surveillance methods must become terribly sophisticated, and this is already happening, mostly for now in dictatorships, but eventually there will be a global need for surveillance, because establishing complete trust necessitates a total availability of information about any individual, meaning globally, because only then can you be certain that the other party in your transaction is authentically who they claim to be, and you may trust the data they provide, yes, this may sound a bit scary, but this is how it’ll be, it’s inevitable, there’s no turning back, blockchain presents instant verifiability, without humans, or, as we say, gatekeepers, it will exclude unreliable types from society, and retain reliable types, and eventually those who cannot satisfy these security requirements will not be able to lead normal lives, you must, necessarily, be reliable, necessarily good, otherwise you won’t be wired into society, well, what do you say to that? of course you may object that all this cannot work without total surveillance, and you’ll be absolutely right, and that this means exposure, total defenselessness, true enough, but there’s no other way, the water shortage is getting catastrophic, water usage must be restricted, so be it, but for that I must know how much water you consume for drinking, flushing the toilet, taking showers, and watering the garden, and then reward and penalize you accordingly, in other words, everyone must be under constant surveillance, but regarding this, he said in a lowered voice and again wriggled over to his companion, groped for his hand, it was cold, and he didn’t let go of it but went on, before all this begins to sound too scary, there’s one important thing that makes it all doable and bearable, and that is awareness and voluntary compliance, we cannot let things go on as they’ve been going, everyone must take part in global life, everyone, without exception, must be aware of what they’re doing, and at what cost, and why, and what it’s good for, or if it’s good at all, what we must end is the way today we still stupidly allow others to take actions for us without our consent, there’s no other way, there simply isn’t, whoever owns the technology will rule, will be the Lord—but he was not afraid of that, and he kept clutching that ice-cold hand—because no one will mind this, they will simply enjoy their comfortable life, under surveillance, it goes without saying, from there it’s just one step to the virtual world, because everything I’ve been explaining here leads to the virtual world, we’ve been using the internet for fifteen years now, fifteen years ago if someone had said that in fifteen years a person would pay money for a light sword in a game, a light sword, mind you, that can never be grasped, because it does not even exist in physical space, then this someone would have said, no way, well, today this is the greatest market, or that we would be paying money for shoes that would never be on our feet, again, no way, yet when was the last time you held your photos in your hand, you don’t need to hold them, the emotional effect is the same when you view them on your phone or screen, we are transposing more and more things into virtual worlds, come on, give us a blink, and he squeezed that ice-cold bloody hand, we must not forget about NFTs, the world of non-fungible tokens that would project us into an utterly revolutionary future were it not for the fact that, let’s admit, it’s not the future but the present we’re talking about, since NFTs already exist, especially in the world of art, because these NFTs attach, again by means of blockchain technology, unique tokens to digitally created works, thereby making these creations, which exist only digitally, marketable, so that their provenance and uniqueness are guaranteed one hundred percent authentic, and I admit that this development sounds really loony, indeed it might or might not prove viable, we’re experimenting with a tremendous number of new things, some will survive, others won’t, and whereas the Industrial Revolution led to a wasteful lifestyle, the Digital Revolution will prevent wastefulness by penalizing it, we’ll be surrounded by more and more machines, and quite possibly we’ll communicate with a greater number of machines than with live people, so the virtual sphere in our lives will play a far more significant role, and another thing, we’d very much like to be immortal, and this will become possible when we learn how to digitalize and upload our personalities, and theoretically this is already possible, we shall be able to exchange our bodies, and download our minds, we shall be able to replace any body part, these are mere details, what matters most, and he could only repeat this, is utopia itself, because a utopia means a certain direction that seems impossible, and a million utopias might fail to materialize, but the one millionth and first will succeed, it’s cathedral building, yes, and he very much hoped that what he was saying was powerful enough to keep his companion from falling asleep, wake up, soldier, I hear a T-64, they’re coming for us, and if I can endure, so can you, just hear the last thing I have to say—you must never give up, because life will be amazing, give me just one little blink, please give me just one blink.

That you hear me.